Slayers Novel Feats Collection # 4 – The Battle of Saillune

Welcome one and all to the latest installment of the Slayers Novel Feats series! This one covers the fourth novel: Slayers: The Battle of Saillune, which covers a familiar arc over the Slayers NEXT anime – the Saillune family feud, accompanied with the “mid-rank” Mazoku Kanzel (spelt Kanzeil in the novel). The Battle of Saillune also briefly mentions the events of Phil’s feud with his youngest brother seen in the original Slayers anime, and everyone’s favorite Princess-Priestess is at last introduced in this novel, far later than in the anime.

Lina, in describing the effects that Saillune City has on her magic, says the following:

In sorcerer, a hexagram symbolizes the stable flow of power or balance. A pentagram, on the other hand, destabilizes, or unbalances the natural flow of power. A pentagram represents the power of negation. You get me?

Gourry’s mouth was open so wide that I could’ve shoved my whole boot down his throat.

On a small scale, without any magical amplification, a pentagram is no more powerful than a basic amulet or a ward – but if you make it massive enough, it has the same effect as a powerful magical ward.

Saillune city is laid out like a giant hexagram, and we’re looking at the center of it. Because of the interference of the ward’s field, any spell that draws on balance for power, aka White Magic spells, are amplified. On the other hand, any spell drawing its power on imbalance, like any of my attack spells, have their powers weakened. It sounds pretty bad, but let me tell you, it could be worse. We could be in the middle of a banishment pentagram. That would be a major bummer. (pg 35-6)

We sort of knew this already, but Lina explains it real well, like she always does.

Next up, Lina speeds away with a Ray Wing, only to run into some trouble:

Just after we began to speed away, I ran into a shockwave.

WHACK!

It rammed straight into my wind barrier with such a jolt that it knocked my brains loose for a second. I managed to snap out of it and regain my midair balance. The force of the impact had sent us huling down into the courtyard, and I barely from plowing into a rush of startled guards.

Fortunately for me and Gourry, the Wind Barrier held fast. If it had shattered from the collision with the shockwave, both of us would have been pulverized instantly.

A shockwave plus a levitation spell equals a sorcerer who is by no means an amateur. (pg. 48-9)

That sorcerer of course, was Kanzel. This also shows that Mazoku really can emit genuine shockwaves, as seen in the second novel.

Moving on…

After a few minutes of daydreaming, I suddenly noticed Kanzeil hotfooting through and opening some serious distance between us. Gourry and I picked up our pace to catch up…but just then I felt the weirdest sensation.

No matter how fast we walked, we couldn’t catch up with Kanzeil. As I wondered how he could be getting father and father from us, he suddenly vanished. I froze and whipped around to Gourry.

He had vanished along with Kanzeil.

Dammit all to hell.

I’d fallen for that asshole sorcerer’s spell.

I jerked my head around to look behind me. The passageway seemed to go on forever, disappearing into blackness. I gritted my teeth, unable to see neither the temple nor the palace anymore.

The first thing that went through my head was simple: Was a spell like that really possible? In theory, I supposed it was. Summoning spells manipulate space by folding it to accommodate whatever’s summoned, but a spell that messed up space that bad? Yeesh. (pg. 70-1)

How does Lina get out of this bind?

What I’d summoned through my chant was indeed a regular white dove. The instant that normal space came in contact with the warped space of the corridor, the warping spell broke. You see, whenever real space and unreal space collide with each other, real space always wins; connecting a fake world to the real world means bye-bye to Crazy Land. (pg. 74)

So basically the same as in NEXT. But I found the descriptions related to summons with space manipulation intriguing. As we know, the Giga Slave is something of a summon. In its ability to destroy the universe and return it to nothingness, does the entire space-time continuum get warped into the Sea of Chaos and demolished? Given what we’ve seen, that seems likely as the precise mechanism.

Now it was as if a hand passed over the sky and darkened the whole earth.

A very big hand that wanted me dead.

The complete blackness was pretty unsettling, but I needed to strategize pretty damn fast. I chanted rapidly.

“Lighting!” I called out. I extended the palm of my hand, waving it in a circular pattern to release a swath of light in every direction. Except, there wasn’t light, only an inky-looking wave. Whatever spell Zuuma had summoned, it didn’t just block light – it sapped light from any and all light sources within its field. Not only that, but I couldn’t sense my opponent’s presence. (pg. 80)

Zuuma? You mean Zuma from Slayers REVOLUTION and EVOLUTION-R? Yep. He’s made an appearance in this novel. Far earlier than the anime schedule! And he’s got some neat tricks, as you can see.

Gourry’s sensory abilities were superhuman. They were off the charts compared to those of your average guy, so the fact that Gourry’d detected an enemy presence in my room – a presence even I had trouble detecting, came as no real surprise. (pg. 84)

Lina was attacked alone by Zuuma, while Gourry had no trouble sensing it from his own room. Pretty good.

Next up is a case of killer food:

The tentacles stew creature emerging from my bowl plopped onto the table. I can’t describe its body better than to compare it to a large, rubbery ball with dozens of gnarled tentacles that looked like shiny, slithery tree roots. And what looked like a deformed humanoid, was emerging from the chicken. (pg. 99)

On the same page, we have another neat trick:

The room on the other side looked weirdly familiar. I saw a banquet table laden with exotic foods, made far less appetizing by a jungle of writhing tentacles and a seaweed monster. Identical copies of me and Gourry stood right in front of us, framed in the doorway like a pair of slack-jawed idiots.

A mirror spell.

I waved to my own reflection, then smiled dumbly as it waved and smiled dumbly back.

“A mirroring spell.” I replied. “You don’t see that everyday.”

“What kinda wizard could cast a spell like that?!”

I shook my head. “We’re definitely trapped here by whoever’s doing the casting. I don’t think we have a choice.” (pg. 99-100)

So in addition to summoning powerful creatures, Kanzel (who was behind this incident) can also essentially seal people in a mirroring spell.

After Gourry goes to town:

Gourry and I suddenly noticed that everything in the room was back to normal. The banquet table was perfectly set with the tureen of stew, the plate of roast chicken, the fancy cookery, and the expensive silverware in all proper places.

Only one detail was different: my mantle. The various blasts I’d released during the fight had done a number on it, leaving it tattered and scorched. (pg. 106)

So basically the space in the mirror spell returns to normal after it ends.

Lina’s describes the effects of Phil’s fist:

Lemme tell you, when a man’s neck is snapped and half of the bones in his body are shattered, you don’t need the pulse check. (pg. 118)

All from a punch. We knew Phil was strong, but the novel goes into more detail.

“Lina!” Gourry shouted, pointing upward. “Up there!” He was referring to a massive black object directly over us and falling fast.

When the object hit, it slammed to the ground with such force that it rocked the foundation of the meeting hall. I stumbled to stay on my feet just as the giant projectile screeched. (pg. 129)

The object in question was another summon from Kanzel. This, for the record, was it:

The beetle pivoted toward me again and gaped. Without another thought, I flung myself sidewasy just as the demon sounded off a terrible screech.

A giant, destructive explosion went off several yards behind me. Whipping my head in its direction, I saw the courtyard – the portion of it I’d been standing in, anyway – completely flattened. All greenery had dissipated and the area had returned into a smoking crater.

Hot damn!

Only a shockwave could’ve caused that much damage – a shockwave emitted by the creature itself. (pg. 134)

Yet more shockwaves, and look at the damage they do! Since Kanzel is obviously stronger than the creature he summoned, it seems likely that Lina’s Ray Wing wind barrier can tank these kinds of attacks.

Moving on…

There were no two ways about it: Gourry and I had to cross through that place to get to our destination. I didn’t like the idea of being exposed, especially since I could sense at least two hidden lookouts. (pg. 151)

More enhanced senses.

And here’s more on Kanzel and the Beetle from before:

I was coming to realize that Kanzeil probably had been the one to summon the beetle. That damn thing had withstood my Atscha Dist spell, and any demon who could summon a creature that powerful had to be ridiculously powerful himself. The thought was frightening. (pg. 158)

An insectlike buzz radiated from a black mist forming around Alfred’s feet. Inhuman shapes began to rise from the darkness, quivering ominously.

Shadow beasts! Lovely.

Shadow beasts are low-ranking demons summoned from the astral plane. They’re like zombies or leeches attaching themselves to targets to drain out life force. They’re pretty unstable creatures that’ll fizzle out in half a day without anything to suck on, but that didn’t make my situation any better. (pg. 184-5)

Once again, a nifty little summon. Alfred brought forth a fleet of them. Alfred also has another spell, Diskang:

The spell caused Alfred’s shadow, which was caused by the lighting spells emanating from the lampposts, to grow to immense proportions. The monstrous shadow took the shape of a dragon’s head. I knew what that meant – that dragon was a low-ranking astral plane demon. Lighting spell would be useless again. (pg. 195)

Now, Amelia gets in on the action:

“Flow Break!” Amelia’s voice boomed impressively, loud and clear over the battle racket. The ground beneath her began to glow brightly; it was the same kind of luminescence lighting spells emanate, but Amelia had cast something far more effective.

An instant later, the points of a large hexagram pulsated out from the glowing aura and spread widely in all directions. On contact with the light, the dragon shadow and shadow beasts blinked out of existence, leaving a dumbfounded Alfred standing alone with his jaw slack. Then, as quickly as the hexagram appeared, it vanished.

Want me to explain that one, do ya? Amelia’s spell worked a lot like the one I’d used to break free from Kanzeil’s space distortion: the hexagram’s warding field had temporarily opened a portal to the astral plane and forced back a natural balance. That means that any and all demons – whose existence in our world is unnatural and unstable – had been pushed back to their own realm where they belong. (pg. 196-7)

Flow Break explained more in depth. Amelia also has some heightened senses in some respects that Lina and Gourry do not.

We definitely destroyed that piece of Shabranigdu, but since that battle I’ve thought plenty about the other piece of the Demon Lord, the one sealed in the Kataart Mountains, to the north. The scattered pieces of Shabranigdu are probably separate parts of a single consciousness, with each piece connected to the others regardless of the distance between them. So when I dispatched Ruby Eye with the spell even more powerful than Dragon Slave, that naturally pissed off the Demon Lord. He must’ve immediately, ordered his demon assassins to hunt me down, and Kanzeil could easily be one of e’m.

That’s what Amelia was talking about,” I concluded. “That must be the evil she sensed at work in the world.” (pg. 217)

Lina’s theory about Shabranigdu was wrong, but the “evil at work in the world” was right.

“Ragna Blast!”

CHOOM!

A reverse pentagram blazed in the ground around Kanzeil. Its five interior sides tapered upward till they met and formed a black pillar that surged downward, ensnaring Kanzeil. Black plasma shot from all sides of the pillar, charging inside with deadly energy levels. The power was intense enough to vaporize a brass demon in a blink. (pg. 225)

What is “a brass demon” made out of? I wonder.

We’ll wonder some more, as that concludes the notable feats from Slayers: The Battle of Saillune. Amelia has now joined the party, and it seems that the plotline for Slayers: NEXT will now ensue in depth. I’m looking forward to seeing Xellos appear.